Tomorrow morning, David
Yerushalmi, Senior Counsel at the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC),
will present oral argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
D.C. Circuit on behalf of several former clients of the Council
on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), including Muslim clients, who
were the victims of a massive fraud and cover-up perpetrated by CAIR.
Judge Paul Friedman, the federal district court judge who presided
over this six-year old lawsuit which alleges that CAIR defrauded
dozens of Muslim and non-Muslim clients, issued a shocking ruling
when he summarily dismissed the case.
The dismissal did not disclaim the fraud. Rather, the judge
held that CAIR was not responsible for it. Yerushalmi will be
arguing that the district court’s ruling was wrong as a matter of
law, asking the D.C. Circuit to reverse and reinstate the claims
against CAIR.
Yerushalmi commented: “The briefs we filed on behalf of our
Muslim and African-American clients, all of whom were victims of
CAIR’s fraud, demonstrate that the lower court’s ruling was both
substantively and procedurally biased against our clients. We
fully expect an emphatic reversal.”
CAIR, a self-described Muslim public interest law firm, was
previously named as a Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front group by the FBI
and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the federal criminal trial and
conviction of a terrorist funding cell organized around one of the
largest Muslim charities, the Holy Land Foundation (HLF). HLF
raised funds for violent jihad on behalf of Hamas, and top CAIR
officials were part of the conspiracy.
In addition, several of CAIR’s top executives have been convicted of
terror-related crimes.
As a result, the FBI publicly announced that it has terminated any
outreach activities with the national organization, which bills
itself as “America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy
organization.”
The two lawsuits dismissed by Judge Friedman, which were consolidated
by the court because they arise out of the same facts, follow an
earlier lawsuit that had also alleged that CAIR’s fraudulent conduct
amounted to racketeering, a federal RICO crime. In that case,
the court dismissed the RICO counts, concluding that CAIR’s conduct
as alleged was fraudulent but not a technical violation of RICO.
The pending lawsuits allege that Morris Days, the “Resident Attorney”
and “Manager for Civil Rights” at the now defunct CAIR-MD/VA chapter
in Herndon, Virginia, was in fact not an attorney and that he failed
to provide legal services for clients who came to CAIR for legal
representation.
As alleged, CAIR knew of this fraud and purposefully conspired with
Days to keep the CAIR clients from discovering that their legal
matters were being mishandled or not handled at all.
Furthermore, the complaints allege that according to CAIR internal
documents, there were hundreds of victims of the CAIR fraud scheme.
According to court documents, CAIR knew or should have known that
Days was not a lawyer when it hired him. But, like many
criminal organizations, things got worse when CAIR officials were
confronted with clear evidence of Days’ fraudulent conduct.
Rather than come clean and attempt to rectify past wrongs, CAIR
conspired with its Virginia Chapter to conceal and further the fraud.
To this end, CAIR officials purposefully concealed the truth about
Days from their clients, law enforcement, the Virginia and D.C. state
bar associations, and the media.
When CAIR did get irate calls from clients about Days’ failure to
provide competent legal services, CAIR fraudulently deceived its
clients about Days’ relationship to CAIR, suggesting he was never
actually employed by CAIR, and even concealing the fact that CAIR had
fired him once some of the victims began threatening to sue.
While Judge Friedman agreed that Days and CAIR’s Virginia chapter
were liable for fraud, he concluded, after improperly weighing the
evidence, that CAIR National in D.C., the named defendant in the
lawsuit, was not responsible for Days’ fraudulent conduct.
Yerushalmi added: “CAIR engaged in a massive criminal
fraud in which literally hundreds of CAIR clients have been
victimized. In his ruling, Judge Friedman inexplicably ignored
material facts that establish CAIR National’s liability and then
engaged in a transparently disingenuous ‘weighing’ of the factual
evidence he did address, which is improper when evaluating
cross-motions for summary judgment. During oral argument, I
intend to highlight the legal and analytical infirmities of this
patently incorrect decision.”
|
No comments:
Post a Comment